AI Analysis: Petroleum products by supply and disposition, monthly

Executive Summary

Statistics Canada's Table 25100081 tracks monthly volumes of 31 petroleum products across 10 supply and disposition categories from January 2019 to December 2025, capturing 12,372 valid records with values ranging from -977,576 to 10,512,520 cubic metres. Total petroleum activity grew approximately 8.8% over the period, peaking at 86.2 million cubic metres in July 2025, with the data exhibiting strong right skew driven by a small number of dominant product-category combinations. The dataset provides a near real-time, comprehensive view of Canada's petroleum supply chain, though notable variability — including 1,420 negative-value records and 105 statistical outliers — warrants careful interpretation.

Key Findings

• Total Canadian petroleum supply and disposition grew by approximately 8.8% over the study period, rising from roughly 75.2 million cubic metres in January 2019 to a peak of 86.2 million cubic metres in July 2025.
• The dataset contains 12,372 valid records spanning 84 monthly periods, but only 149 unique time series are populated out of 26,040 possible product-category combinations, indicating sparse coverage across the full matrix.
• The distribution is heavily right-skewed, with a mean of 509,195 cubic metres approximately 8 times higher than the median of 62,716 cubic metres, and a standard deviation of 1,303,002 reflecting extreme variability driven by a few high-volume categories.
• Approximately 11.5% of records (1,420 out of 12,372) contain negative values, representing adjustments, net withdrawals, or corrections in supply and disposition accounting rather than true measurement errors.
• 105 statistical outliers were identified using Z-score analysis (|Z| > 3), concentrated in specific product and supply/disposition combinations, pointing to episodic supply shocks or reporting anomalies in particular segments.
• The interquartile range of 344,642 cubic metres — with 25% of values below 3,607 and 75% below 348,248 — confirms that the vast majority of individual product-category observations are relatively small, while a handful of dominant entries skew the overall totals.
• Seasonal fluctuations are consistently visible across all six years of monthly data, with recurring annual peaks and troughs suggesting demand-driven cycles tied to heating, transportation, and refinery activity patterns.